Concealed in the Shadows

by Gabrielle Arrowsmith

  I hate this. I hate the waiting. I’m sure the rest of the town feels the same way, the majority of them trying to sleep upright in the school and hospital halls again tonight.

  Someone should have called us by now. My stomach twists with the thought that something has gone wrong with the mission. There are a lot more lives at stake now. What if we never hear from them? What if all of them, including my sister, are lost to us forever?

  A cold fear overtakes me. I’ll become a symbol of walking misery, only it will be worse than it was in Miles. No one ever noticed my suffering in Miles. They would notice here. They would watch my comings and goings. They would stare at the girl who lost everything, a melancholy ghost mourning among the happy and liberated people of Sheridan. I would be smothered by their unwelcomed sympathy and constant effort to make things right for me. But they never could. No one could ever fix my world if she was stolen from it. I couldn’t live if she was dead. I’m sure of that. I wouldn’t do it.

  The phone rings. Even Merick is too frozen to answer it on the first ring. He fumbles to pick it up. I can hear a frenzied masculine voice, but I can’t tell whose. Information is fired quickly, but I can’t make out a word. I can read Merick’s expression, though, and it doesn’t seem we’ve fared much better than my darkest fear. He stands and gestures frantically for the rest of us to get on our feet.

  “Yes sir,” Merick says before ending the phone call. Sir. My father was the caller. I’m glad I still have him, but I need more than that. I need Evvie most of all, but now I need the Davids brothers too. I never thought I needed anyone besides my sister, but the Davids brothers have wiggled their way into my heart, and I’ve made a place there for each of them to stay.

  “Galv, get your bags. We need Della on this one too. Cheng, go make sure the van is filled with gas.” The thumps of Cheng’s footsteps echo up the stairwell as he rushes down to the lot. Merick continues directing the nervous doctor. He read the intensity of the voice on the phone and the solemnity of Merick’s expression. “Pick her up and head straight for Lame Deer on the reservation. Do you remember where the college is?”

  “I do,” Rico says. He and Galvesten were invited to bring each of their expertise to the waiting room, in case of an emergency or immediate threat to Sheridan.

  “No. I need you here,” Merick tells him.

  “Who is it?” I find the courage to ask, though I don’t want to know the answer. “Who’s hurt?”

  “All of them,” Merick answers dismally. “Sydney, I’m sending you with Galv and Della. They might need another hand.”

  All of them? That can’t be. I wish they were sending me to meet Evvie, to hold her in my arms and tell her that I’m sorry. I’m the only person who can console her after whatever has happened to her.

  “Evvie?” I ask him. Merick gives a quick shake of his head and begins down the steps. “Merick, don’t just shake your head,” I call after him. He stops midway on the stairs and looks back up at me in the doorway. “Didn’t they make it to her?”

  “The mission failed before they made it through the barrier,” he says as he turns and continues down the stairs. Somehow, even his gait seems filled with gloom as he exits the restaurant.

  Merick is the leader of Sheridan when my father is gone, which it sounds like is often. Not three months ago, he buried Decklin’s old partner, and now today’s disaster is added to his conscience. These are his troops. These people are his family. Shame spreads in me when I realize how selfish I was to be relieved that Evvie is not among those that were evidently attacked by the BOTs, and that my father is well enough to be talking.

  I don’t particularly like Jerus or Alix, though I do have an admiration for the female seeksman, but Decklin is a steadfast, goodhearted young man. He’s brave and dutiful. And then, there are the Davids brothers. The lump in my throat grows and obstructs my airway. My throat and eyes burn as I hop into the front seat of the van with Galvesten. I can’t lose Cy or Crewe.

  I am inconceivably regretful that my last words to Crewe were ‘I hate you’. I didn’t mean it even as I said it, but I wanted to hurt him the way he hurt me. I’m glad Merick is sending me along. I want to be there to apologize to Crewe. How could I have told him that I hate him? He and Cy are truly my heroes. They changed my fate, and so readily fight for me still.

  Cheng opens the back door of the van and tosses in the jerricans.

  “Good luck, Galv.” Chengs extends his hand and shakes Galvesten’s in a gentlemanly gesture. Bring them home if you can,” he adds dully. Galvesten doesn’t return anything to Cheng before the back doors slam. His voice is broken too.

  I still don’t know for sure if Evvie is alive, but I feel as though it would have been revealed to us by now, like the Braves twins were, if they had killed her. I believe my sister is alive, so the mission was not unmerited. But if lives are lost on her account, without her being rescued and returned to us, then I will feel as much guilt as my father, who led them into the attack and Galvesten who will try to save them.

  He turns the key in the ignition, and puts the van into gear. I don’t know how long this trip is going to be, but I can see Galv doesn’t plan to talk for any of it. He is overwhelmed with the pressure his job brings today. He’s not only expected to return with the lives of sons and a daughter of Sheridan saved, but with the protectors that this town so desperately needs right now. The demand is too much for him to bear. If it’s affecting him this way, I wonder whether Della will be composed at all.

  I’m sent into the hospital to retrieve Della. The population of Sheridan has seemed absolutely miniscule until now, when I see half the town’s population crowded along the hospital walls. I’ve seen fifty times this many gathered at various events in Miles, but this sight fazes me in a way that none other has. These aren’t celebrators detached from each other and attached to their devices like I would see inside. This community huddles together in fear.

  “I’m looking for Della,” I say to any one of the faces starring at me with angst.

  “Right behind you, darling,” Della says, not noticing the urgency in which I seek her. She holds a needle of some kind in her hand and walks past me to administer it to someone.

  “We have to go now,” I tell her.

  “I’ll just be a second.” Her stubby legs hasten and shuffle away from me. “If she doesn’t get her insulin—”

  “Della, people are dying!” I’m forced to yell over her mumblings. After my statement, I realize the hovering fear of this crowd is only part of what makes their presence so overwhelming. It’s their morose hearts that disturb me most. Their sullen eyes are glued on me now and voices fall silent throughout the main hall. The adults take a hushed moment for my words to sink in, for the faces of their town’s protectors to settle in their hearts. The children who are still awake, however, erupt in frightened cries, waking the others.

  Della drops the shot on the ground and walks dutifully toward me. A few men rise in the background, and approach me with a chatter of nervous questions.

  “I don’t know anything,” I tell them. “All I know is people are dying and you’re keeping us from getting there!” I say more discreetly this time, as not to undo the work of the parents who are trying to reassure their frightened children. With that, the men back off so that Della and I can take up our burden and travel to the ones who need us.

  We open the front doors of the hospital just in time to see Galvesten and another man slide a casket on top of the bench seat in the back of the van beside another one. This is when the reality of the failed mission hits. Some may already be dead, or it’s fairly certain that they’ll return with us that way. We wouldn’t be wasting the time we could be using to save them in order to make preparations for unlikely deaths. Less than six will return alive.

  I gather myself and pull Della toward the van. Right away, she starts firing questions at the two of us. Did she not just hear what I told the men in the hospital? Perhaps she thought I was only s
aying it to quicken our escape, but it was the genuine truth. I don’t know anything. I don’t know whether Crewe and Cy Davids live. I don’t know whether our strike against the county will endanger my sister. I don’t know what I have done.

  Neither Galvesten nor I answer a single one of Della’s questions. Her frightened babble seems so remote to each of us, who are plagued by our own consciences. Finally, Della resolves to sit back and trust that she knows everything that could possibly help her to save their lives.

  All of them. Merick said that all of them are hurt, yet we’ve left capable hands behind. I know it’s not due to limited capacity is this oversized van. Merick had a mission of his own when he descended the stairs. Rico and the two seeksmen from Rapids County quickly followed. I wonder if they were staying behind to prepare for a full-scale assault on Sheridan. What good would four of them serve?

  Then I entertain another thought. If annihilation is in the works, I’m in as much danger of dying as anyone else is. We’re traveling a major road with nothing diffusing our infrared energy. If I had learned that Evvie were one of them among the wounded, I wouldn’t care so much if I died. She would have been out of the hands of torturers. If she or I were blown to bits on the road, it wouldn’t be anything I could protect her against. Evvie would know that I did the best that I could for her, and that would have to be good enough.

  But that’s not the case. Evvie is still entrapped by the Miles County BOTs. I can’t die now. With Cy and Crewe’s fate unknown, I am the only person that I know will fight for her. I’ve only known my father for a short day. I’m not yet convinced the captain would go for her. Actually, I not convinced Crewe would go for her either if it would put the Sheridan people at greater risk. Cy is the only one that I know would go, no questions asked. But I don’t know if he, or any of the others, will live through the night.

  After a stale hour, I break the ice in the gloomy van. “Galvesten, have you ever dealt with something like this before?” Immediately after I’ve asked the question, I realize it was wrong to ask. If he hasn’t, I’ve only increased his qualms regarding what he is about to face.

  “Yes,” he answers. The heaviness in me lightens just an iota. “For my last residency after med school, I was a trauma surgeon. I was employed full-time at that hospital afterward.” Pride flashes through him for just a moment, but the road we’re headed down vanquishes it. “I worked there less than a year before I went into the service.”

  “You were in the army?” I ask.

  “Marines,” he corrects. “But I wasn’t combat-oriented, too often,” he decides. “I was a doctor. This is exactly the kind of work that I did before the nation’s entire defense was called home for The Great Separation.”

  “Did you have family you were separated from?” Galvesten had alluded to this before on the car ride back toward the safe house after I demanded to return for Evvie. I hadn’t wanted to pry then, even though I was desperate for as much information as I could get my hands on.

  “Yeah, but that’s not what I’m referring to. Being in the marines, or any branch of the military, you’re privy to a lot more information than the average citizen. Of course when you relay it to them, you’re just seen as a skeptic, a conspirator, a traitor,” he concludes.

  “What did you know?” I ask him. “What was The Great Separation?”

  “Well you said you like to study history, so I suppose you know times weren’t good economically at the time that the population bill was going through Congress. Do you know what Congress was?” he asks me.

  “Yeah,” I answer.

  “People were beginning to liken it to the Great Depression of the 1930s, only it wasn’t as severe. But it did have the potential to plummet, see. We were still involved in the wars overseas that were then only starting to spiral. War is a costly, costly thing, and I’m not just taking about casualties. We got out, rather abruptly, and it upset everything our allies had supported us in working toward for over a decade.”

  “You can imagine that the United States took a lot of heat after dragging other nations into the wars, and then bailing as the perils heightened. Not only did we abandon our nation’s longtime loyalty to fighting against occurring oppression, we initiated oppression on the home front. We had to appear weak, see. For the first time since the American Civil War, we were a separated nation.”

  “Political unrest plagued our nation in the year prior to the bill being ratified. Then in 2015, the separation became literal and the protest remained. Our allies no longer viewed us as traitors, seeing the state that our nation was in, and we didn’t lose our important trading rights with the warring nations. This world war has gone on longer than the previous two combined, and still our nation hasn’t gotten attacked or become involved in any way. The Great Separation has enabled us to prosper in secret while the world’s other great powers suffer. It was all tactical, see.”

  So that’s it. That’s what all of this has been about. I’ve often wondered how a nation so unified, so strong, could have succumbed to this. They couldn’t have, unless it was intended to be that way. I wonder if this nation will revert to the United States once the war ends, if it ever does. I fear where greed may take us.

  Galvesten lets out a heavy breath, but it’s not in conjunction with our nation’s profound history that he’s been helping me understand—a battered old sign welcomes us to Lame Deer. We’re here, but not ready. I can never be prepared for what I’m about to face.